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To this end we must go back to the state we affirmed of
Eternity, unwavering Life, undivided totality, limitless, knowing
no divagation, at rest in unity and intent upon it. Time was not
yet: or at least it did not exist for the Eternal Beings, though
its being was implicit in the Idea and Principle of progressive
derivation.
But from the Divine Beings thus at rest within themselves, how
did this Time first emerge?
We can scarcely call upon the Muses to recount its origin since
they were not in existence then- perhaps not even if they had
been. The engendered thing, Time, itself, can best tell us how it
rose and became manifest; something thus its story would run:
Time at first- in reality before that "first" was produced by
desire of succession- Time lay, self-concentrated, at rest within
the Authentic Existent: it was not yet Time; it was merged in the
Authentic and motionless with it. But there was an active
principle there, one set on governing itself and realizing itself
[= the All-Soul], and it chose to aim at something more than its
present: it stirred from its rest, and Time stirred with it. And
we, stirring to a ceaseless succession, to a next, to the
discrimination of identity and the establishment of ever-new
difference, traversed a portion of the outgoing path and produced
an image of Eternity, produced Time.
For the Soul contained an unquiet faculty, always desirous of
translating elsewhere what it saw in the Authentic Realm, and it
could not bear to retain within itself all the dense fullness of
its possession.
A Seed is at rest; the nature-principle within, uncoiling
outwards, makes way towards what seems to it a large life; but by
that partition it loses; it was a unity self-gathered, and now,
in going forth from itself, it fritters its unity away; it
advances into a weaker greatness. It is so with this faculty of
the Soul, when it produces the Kosmos known to sense- the mimic
of the Divine Sphere, moving not in the very movement of the
Divine but in its similitude, in an effort to reproduce that of
the Divine. To bring this Kosmos into being, the Soul first laid
aside its eternity and clothed itself with Time; this world of
its fashioning it then gave over to be a servant to Time, making
it at every point a thing of Time, setting all its progressions
within the bournes of Time. For the Kosmos moves only in Soul-
the only Space within the range of the All open to it to move in-
and therefore its Movement has always been in the Time which
inheres in Soul.
Putting forth its energy in act after act, in a constant progress
of novelty, the Soul produces succession as well as act; taking
up new purposes added to the old it brings thus into being what
had not existed in that former period when its purpose was still
dormant and its life was not as it since became: the life is
changed and that change carries with it a change of Time. Time,
then, is contained in differentiation of Life; the ceaseless
forward movement of Life brings with it unending Time; and Life
as it achieves its stages constitutes past Time.
Would it, then, be sound to define Time as the Life of the Soul
in movement as it passes from one stage of act or experience to
another?
Yes; for Eternity, we have said, is Life in repose, unchanging,
self-identical, always endlessly complete; and there is to be an
image of Eternity-Time- such an image as this lower All presents
of the Higher Sphere. Therefore over against that higher life
there must be another life, known by the same name as the more
veritable life of the Soul; over against that movement of the
Intellectual Soul there must be the movement of some partial
phase; over against that identity, unchangeableness and stability
there must be that which is not constant in the one hold but puts
forth multitudinous acts; over against that oneness without
extent or interval there must be an image of oneness, a unity of
link and succession; over against the immediately infinite and
all-comprehending, that which tends, yes, to infinity but by
tending to a perpetual futurity; over against the Whole in
concentration, there must be that which is to be a Whole by
stages never final. The lesser must always be working towards the
increase of its Being, this will be its imitation of what is
immediately complete, self-realized, endless without stage: only
thus can its Being reproduce that of the Higher.
Time, however, is not to be conceived as outside of Soul;
Eternity is not outside of the Authentic Existent: nor is it to
be taken as a sequence or succession to Soul, any more than
Eternity is to the Divine. It is a thing seen upon Soul,
inherent, coeval to it, as Eternity to the Intellectual Realm.
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